Why do green fanatics keep enacting policies that do environmental damage?
Consider the Biden administration’s war on domestic production of energy, a cave-in to the climate fanatics who drive policy in the Democratic Party.
From his first-day-in-office cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline and a large-scale permitting slowdown to his September drilling ban on our Alaskan National Petroleum Reserve, President Biden has battled to kill the US oil, coal, and natural gas industries.
Not only have Biden’s policies threatened the US’s hard-won energy independence, achieved under ex-President Donald Trump for the first time since 1949, they’ve prompted massive carbon emissions.
Why?
Because, as Alfredo Ortiz and Lee Rizzuto note and Steve Moore highlights, we’ve had to rely more on oil imports, to the tune of 8.3 million barrels a day last year, including 1 million from Persian Gulf producers.
A tanker trip from Saudi Arabia to the US takes between 32 and 51 days, a trip that will itself burn about 2.5 million barrels of fuel — putting out some 58,000 pounds of CO2 emissions per hour.
How on earth can a green weirdo justify that?
And that’s to say nothing of the fact that being dependent on oil from afar brings with it massive geopolitical weaknesses too (like Biden having to go on bended knee to the Saudis, only to be slapped down).
The fuel huge ships expend isn’t clean burning, either: One large container ship emits the same amount of sulfur oxide pollution, for example, as a brain-busting 50 million cars.
Gee, we’re no experts, but that sounds like the kind of thing someone concerned about the environment might want to avoid.
Trump drove the amount of pollutants like that down too, by the way.
Per the EPA, a whole range of pollutants, including sulfur oxides, dropped 7% between 2017 and 2019.
The reason for all this, of course, is that climate policy for the left is not driven by anything close to science.
Let alone anything approaching realism about US and global energy needs.
If it were, the macro theme would be: Let’s start using cleaner fossil fuels while building massive nuclear generation capacity, with room for solar and wind as supplementals — and never stop innovating.
Instead, we have the insane idea of “de-growth” — driving down living standards to medieval levels to choke off CO2 output.
Couple that with the witless histrionics of doomsday prophets like Greta Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion (who should have as much credibility as some bearded, barefoot loon wearing a THE END IS NIGH sandwich board).
Progs just can’t stop doing the very damage they claim their policies will correct.
But don’t hold your breath waiting for a reset.
Even though all that tanker sulfur might make you want to.